70 MUSICAL EVENTS V ozee of the Bard W ILLIAM BaLCOM'S "Songs of Innocence and of Experi- ence," a long work, about two hours and twenty minutes of mu- sic, for large forces, had its New York première at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last month. There can be few English-speaking composers who on reading William Blake's "Songs of Innocence and of Experi- ence, Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul" have not con- templated setting all forty- six of the poems. The recur- rent imagery, the antithetical pairs of poems, and the strange, supple rhythms of the verse suggest musical treatment. (Some of the "In- nocence" poems are sung at merry gatherings in Blake's "An Island in the Moon." , Blake himself, we are told, sometimes in company sang songs of his own composition. ) At least a few of the poems-the more innocent ones- are likely to be familiar from nursery days The title page of "Songs of Inno- cence" shows a nurse, or mother, and two children reading a book, in a smil- ing landscape; in the letters of the title, figures are dancing, singing, pip- ing. What may have been planned as a children's book-"happy songs every child may joy to hear"-became some- thing more. The poet Kathleen Raine wrote, "Simple as these poems may be in form, they contain a great wisdom and rest upon the firm ground of phi- losophy. They embody essential knowledge more enduring than the imposing structures of conceptual thought elaborated by the philosophers of the Enlightenment." They were composed not only with words. In the great libraries of the world, one can read the poems as they left Blake's hand: engraved on copper, printed in colored inks, illustrated, the verses framed and twined with spring- ing vegetable forms, from tree and vine, which seem a symbol of life and joy. No two copies are alike. Some are cool, some glowing. Blake colored each with watercolors prepared by a method that St. Joseph, in a vision, had revealed to him. (Some are thought to have been colored by Mrs. Blake.) The poems take on different tones. "The Blossom" in the Rosen- Îli' f. TGlXk1ttt'd wald copy of "Songs of Innocence" in the Library of Congress is a very di- rect statement in rust and green; in a British Library copy, reds, blues, and yellows conspire in something far more intricate. (I suppose studies have been made of the way typography af- fects a poem. Auden has a different accent in Faber's Bodoni, Random House's rounder type, and the squat face, emulating a typewriter, of the "Collected Poems;" T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" seems slightly out of tune set in anything but Perpetua.) The barefoot poet-shepherd in the frontis- piece of "Songs of Inno- cence" in Washington wears a flesh-colored garment and holds a dark pipe; in Lon- don, wearing a light-blue garment and holding a pale boxwood pipe, he seems a different person. But either way his carefree stance, as he hear kens to the laughing cloud-borne child above him, is in marked contrast to his attitude in the frontispiece of "Songs of Experi- ence." The happy sheep still crop calmly, but shepherd and child gaze out at us with eyes that have contem- plated the Tyger as well as the Lamb. In this collection, the Nurse's Song grows sicklied. The Chimney Sweeper has no green-and-golden dream to console him. The sound of bells and birdsong on the Ecchoing Green yields to the youthful harlot's curse, blighting London's midnight streets. Mercy, Pity, Love, and Peace are can- celled by Cruelty, Jealousy, Terror, and Secrecy, in otherwise identical lines. In a program nQte, Bolcom calls Blake "the most urgent of poets" and suggests that "we can learn from him in the time of our deepest crisis," that "the 'Songs of Innocence and of Ex- perience' may be the clearest explana- tion we have of what forces have brought us to this frightening im- passe. " Wilfrid Mellers, I know, once planned to compose a complete "Inno- cence and Experience" cycle. His "The Gates of the Dream," a setting of "The Book of Thel" (where "In- nocence and Experience" themes run through long, lovely lines), also con- tains "The Lilly" and "The Little Girl Lost;" he wrote the cantata ........... --- F-EBR.UAR.Y 2,1987 "Sun-flower: The Divine Tetrad of William Blake," and set "The Eccho- ing Green" for soprano and clarinet. He did not complete a full cycle, and it is easy to understand why: a com- poser's first attraction to the idea is likely to be succeeded by a feeling that it is somehow presumptuous, un- seemly, and needlessly thorough to work steadily through all Blake's pages, elaborating in a third, large dimension-music-the territory that Blake, with pen and brush, plotted so precisely and so beautifully in fifty-five small plates. Most composers have been content to cull just a few poems to be provided with tunes, harmonies, and timbres. The best-known songs from "Innocence and Experience" are probably those of Virgil Thomson, Benjamin Britten, and Ralph Vaughan Williams. "The Sunflower" was one of Thomson's earliest songs ( 1920); "The Tiger" followed six years later; and in 1951 his Five Songs from William Blake included "The Divine Image," "Tiger! Tiger!," and "The Little Black Boy." Britten set "The Sick Rose" in his "Serenade" , "Spring" in his "Spring Symphony," and six "Experience" songs in his "Songs and Proverbs of William Blake." Nine of Vaughan Williams' T en Blake Songs, for voice and oboe, are from "Innocence and Experience." The most verbally acute settings are Thomson's: the accents, weights, speeds of Blake's lines determine melo- dies that lie flexibly across the musical metres and seem almost to sing them- selves. No composer sets words more deftly than Thomson. ("The Divine Image" and "Tiger! Tiger!," sung by Mack Harrell, with orchestral accom- paniment, can be heard on a CRI disk.) The musically richest settings are Britten's: the charged harmonies, the tensions between tonality and a twelve-note row, the contours of the vocal line, and marvellous sonorities now rich, now bleak re-create a burn- ing vision of Blake's world. When these songs are known, their music tends to sound on and color and enrich any subsequent reading of the poems. (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and the composer recorded the "Songs and Proverbs" for Decca/London.) Vaughan Williams' response to the "Innocence" poems is limpid, his han- dling of "Experience" less potent. The songs, composed for the film "The Vision of William Blake," are simple and modest-Iyricized recita- tion. (There are several recordings.)